Tim Key
Tim Key is publishing his third volume of poetry next month.
His latest anthology, Chapters, is described as his “least ambitious project to date, a slim book of the crap he’s been churning out over the past eighteen months”, and is available for pre-order through Utter & Press, the company run by his friend and illustrator Emily Juniper, ahead of the collection’s release on 6th November.
Compiling the verses Key has posted on Instagram for the last year and a half, “it’s a really simple book of just poems and also just me and Emily just talking throughout the book about the poems and what we’re doing in our lives and stuff like that” he told Craig Charles on his BBC 6 Music radio show.
Elsewhere in his interview with the Red Dwarf star, the former Edinburgh Comedy Award winner recalled some of the awkwardness he felt at spoken word nights, before he began performing at comedy clubs.
“I remember I went to a poetry reading and there were 20 people there, all sat around on beanbags in this residential address” he said. “I remember walking towards it with my little A-Z map and the closer I got to it, the more I’m thinking, ‘this isn’t a pub, this is a house’.
“And I remember sitting around in a circle and becoming aware that maybe half the people were holding their own anthology of poems and that we’d all be reading our own stuff out to each other, rather than it being a few performers and an audience.
“And I was sat there with my poems which were about Mr Men. And I remember the guy before me read his out. His wife had died, pretty heavy poem I think. I found out later that a friend of mine had studied this guy at university. And I’m listening to his stuff and touching my inside pocket thinking: ‘I’m in a bit of trouble here’.
“I remember these two ladies and they had their eyes closed, I think because that’s how they listen to poetry. But it’s not a great sight is it when you’re trying to get something going with your Mr Men stuff and you’ve just got two ladies, really furious with their eyes closed?”
Chapters is available to pre-order now.
Tim Key – Chapters
Tim Key got ants in his pants and has written an anthology of poetry. It is his least ambitious project to date. A slim book of the crap he’s been churning out over the past eighteen months. Poems about men getting stuck in webs, poems about the ancient city of Canterbury, poems about canoodling with a rose.
A prolific sod, he’s selected ninety of his trademark vignettes and packed them off to Emily Juniper for her to fling onto pages and shape into a book. Discussions ensued about what, if anything, the point of it all was, and a healthy debate as to whether it should be broken up into chapters and, if so, why. All of these discussions are documented in the leftover space around the poems. The result is a splurge of words which very occasionally shine a light on modern times. It is the third book Tim and Emily have generated together.
First published: Monday 6th November 2023
Hardback
Paperback
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